Not All Hells are Created Equal [Poem]

I see pain and she is a queen,
the sword in her hand has a hilt of needles,
so that transference is inward and outward.
It is not her joy, but her responsibility.
I acquire objects to ease suffering.
“If I achieve the perfect balance, get thinner, get a better job, write another book,”
She, queen of pain, will cease to visit me.
But I’ve played enough of “The Sims” to know
this couldn’t possibly be true.
Siddhartha and the Marquis De Sade came to the same conclusion.
Bored in a palace full of dreams
And outward perfection,
only leads to bizarre inward experimentation.
“Maybe we are just not meant to be happy,” I think.
“A biological imperative to drive us toward innovation.”
After all, a perfectly content scientist wouldn’t have invented
penicillin, or the 3D printer.
But I just want to get excited again, feel like a person again,
visit Stendhal and draw a single breath without bursting into tears.
Get excited by things that other people seem to - trying a new restaurant
or picking up a new hobby or even, hell, going outside.
Instead I crawl out of bed with dread sitting in my stomach,
leave home to drink. Tell a stranger for the 100th time, “I want to die,”
with a smile on my face.
“That’s the artist’s life, right?” They say, as if they think I’d choose
to stay up all night with the queen.
As if artists are engendered out of a factory made of ruin,
that we were obligated to accept a kind of quiet rape.
“This is the price you pay for being who you are.”
Baby, learn to love your lovelessness. Otherwise you’ll
never sell.
It’s difficult to feel as if bad things have happened to me-
they don’t surface up until years later. Like they were wounds
I covered in dirt that instead of healing, bloomed like flowers.
The rape, the almost murder, the “I don’t love you anymore,”
cocaine on glass and glass imbedded into skin. Knowing you’re
not ‘the right kind of pretty’ to have a normal life, too smart for your own good.
Can’t even remember all the terrible things that happened, because they were all
kind of the same.
But pain does emerge one day to say “Hey, remember me?” To flood me.
Just because I don’t acknowledge them doesn’t mean they don’t
affect me.
The price I pay for ignorance is doubling up in cost.
Loneliness is not simply a state of mind. It is a law.
it’s easy to forget - you’re screaming so loud but they can’t
hear you through the catacombs of your head. Please, it says,
make me less lonely, make the pain go away.
But you know loneliness == true much in the same way
gravity is always 9.8m/s2
The shadow
of every tree has become an iron cage and every day
is a trial, a judgement, an execution.
“You look like you’re doing fine to me,” they say, because I have
the spastic limbs of a robot almost made human, and I want to respond.
“Ever heard the term ‘walking dead?”

Met an old co-worker yesterday.
“It’s nice to see Robert smile these days,” he said.
And I can remember the exact moment I knew he was human.
Not in what he said, not exactly, but in the composition of his face
when he said it.
A lessening of thick lines, gargoyle stone. ‘Ah yes, I see you.’
In that moment I think, possibly, not all hells are created equal.
To remember when I was told, “You never smile anymore. You’re
like a ghost. You don’t respond to anything.”
Was I a ghost? I can’t remember, those days have passed
like gray skin. Barely perceptible, hollowed out. It didn’t feel like
being empty - I simply was.
But now - it’s strange,
That even on the worst days, there are still things
to be enjoyed. Writing a sentence that’s particularly fine,
seeing a cool play on a League of Legends game,
Breaking out of a barrier, where the water isn’t
so cold. These are gradual steps, maybe.
The universe is in a constant state of flux, and
change is inevitable, and blahblahblah. I’m tired of
explaining physics to adults with the mental stability of toddlers.
What I’m trying to say is, within the giant framework of infinite
stability, little changes must occur to maintain it.
Or maybe I’m trying to say: An inevitable push-pull mechanic is not just reactionary, but can also be used for a forward initiative.
I think what I mean to say is this:
Maybe one day I’ll see a sunrise not painted over with the dread
of it re-emerging. Not all hells are created equal.

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